Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Re: Hurdles to power import from Nepal

September 22, 2010

Mr Bihari K Shrestha
Kathmandu

Dear Bihari Krishna jee
The provision with regards to "restricted commodity", doesn’t’ apply to Indian states (like Sikkim) and protectorates and, hence, Bhutan doesn’t face any hurdle in exporting power. Besides, India has invested in Bhutan under special intergovernmental model of 60:40 specifically and the very purpose of this model is to import electricity under “scorch earth” policy such that Bhutan is exporting while suffering load shedding herself and she will have to stay underdeveloped as there won’t be necessary power to industrialize Bhutan (http://www.ratnasansar.com/2010/08/power-to-india.html). Moreover, India is now planning to substantially reduce the grant portion of the financing model after which the “famous” gross national happiness index will take a big nose dive.

Further, another reason behind exempting Bhutan from the licensing requirement is that projects there are “protected” by Indian security personnel while that isn’t possible in Nepal. In Nepal most of us are not willing to have this arrangement in place. I wonder if you recall that late king Birendra put his foot firmly down against such a proposal in the case of Chisapani Karnali project (10,800MW) and, therefore, the work in this project got aborted in late 70s. It is, however unfortunate that there are now quite a few people who wouldn’t mind having Indian security personnel stationed in Nepal. One particular person (I don’t cherish taking his name) has publicly (on TV and radio) said that Nepal should allow India to take care of Nepal army. I thank god that there are very few like him in Nepal.